About This Project

The brief: To create a portrait illustration of Belgian bakery founder Edouard DeBeukelaer.

The context: Griesson – de Beukelaer is one of Europe’s leading companies in the sweet and savoury baked goods market and manufactures at various locations in Germany. DeBeukelaer’s well-established brands include, among many others, Griesson and the iconic Prinzen Rolle. The company, founded by Edouard DeBeukelaer in 1870, has 2100 employees and wants to make people all over the world happy with traditional specialities and brand new, innovative products. Hamburg based brand experts KloseDetering, longtime branding- and packaging collaborators for this brand, were suggesting to bring back the face of the company founder into the packaging context, but not by using an old photography.

What I did: As a starter, I received various portrait references in black and white from the archives, showing Edouard DeBeukelaer with a long beard, wearing glasses and looking straight into the camera. I needed some development rounds in order to get his characteristics right, to re-shape his beard, his clothing details and to fix his sort of friendly seriousness. Even though my finalised line drawing can only be found either on the side or the back of the pack, the portrait really helps to connect with the brand’s heritage and to communicate it’s designation of origin.